Here are 100 books that Heretics fans have personally recommended if you like
Heretics.
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I am a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Vienna (Austria), interested in ethics, political philosophy, and the philosophy of law. I am fascinated by the work of classical philosophers—foremost, Immanuel Kant and David Hume. A particularly interesting question for me concerns how political and legal systems shape people's identity and self-understanding. One focus of my research is on the distorted legal framework of National Socialist Germany. I wrote, together with Professor J. David Velleman (New York University), Konrad Morgen: The Conscience of a Nazi Judge. In German: "Weil ich nun mal ein Gerechtigkeitsfanatiker bin." Der Fall des SS-Richters Konrad Morgen.
How could so many Nazi perpetrators escape to South America? Most relied on the help of a bishop of the Catholic Church in the Vatican, Alois Hudal.
Sands describes the structure of this support system (the so-called ratline) through the story of former SS-Obergruppenführer Otto Gustav Wächter, the governor of Galicia (1942–1944), who was responsible for the deportation of nearly 500,000 Jews to the Nazi death camps.
Wächter's post-war escape to Argentina actually ended in Rome, where he died of an infection in July 1949. Sands offers a riveting analysis of how this man found his way into the Nazi party, rose to a position that implicated him in mass murder, and how, with the support of his wife, he managed to hide in the Austrian mountains for years after the war. Sands also reflects on how difficult it is for the next generation to face up to the…
A tale of Nazi lives, mass murder, love, Cold War espionage, a mysterious death in the Vatican, and the Nazi escape route to Perón's Argentina,"the Ratline"—from the author of the internationally acclaimed, award-winning East West Street.
"Hypnotic, shocking, and unputdownable." —John le Carré, internationally renowned bestselling author
Baron Otto von Wächter, Austrian lawyer, husband, father, high Nazi official, senior SS officer, former governor of Galicia during the war, creator and overseer of the Krakow ghetto, indicted after as a war criminal for the mass murder of more than 100,000 Poles, hunted by the Soviets, the Americans, the British, by Simon…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
Peace has been my passion for more than half a century. In 1970, I refused to carry a weapon while serving in Viet Nam as a combat medic in an infantry battalion commanded by Colonel George Armstrong Custer III. I have witnessed enormous violence inflicted upon human beings, primarily civilians, and the earth which sustains us all. My knowledge of war comes from treating wounds. I have read numerous books about Palestine and Israel through a medic’s eyes. The books I’ve highlighted here will contribute to peace if they are read with care, with love. Never underestimate the power of words.
I admire every detail in this beautifully written family saga that reaches from Lithuania to Jerusalem.
When Amos Oz’s family escapes the antisemitism of Europe in the 1940s and resettles in Palestine, they seem to construct their new home of books rather than mortar. And beyond the towering bookcases, the volumes in twelve languages, lies a city of ancient stone torn by history and religion and competing claims.
Oz’s profound and personal understanding of the Holocaust leads him to conclude that Israel will be stronger by ending the occupation and forging paths that help to unite Jews and Palestinians.
I love the truth, the fact that empathy and compassion have the potential to heal the deepest wounds.
Tragic, comic, and utterly honest, this bestselling and critically acclaimed work is at once a family saga and a magical self-portrait of a writer who witnessed the birth of a nation and lived through its turbulent history. It is the story of a boy growing up in the war-torn Jerusalem of the forties and fifties, in a small apartment crowded with books in twelve languages and relatives speaking nearly as many. The story of an adolescent whose life has been changed forever by his mother's suicide when he was twelve years old. The story of a man who leaves the…
I lived in Paris for six months when I researched and wrote my first Paris book, One Thousand Buildings of Paris, walking every quarter of Paris including some rather dicey areas. I discovered most Parisians don’t wander very far from their own neighborhoods, and casual tourists tend to stay in the center. The first time my boyfriend and I went to Paris together, I planned daily excursions to all the neighborhoods where he had never been. We became flaneurs (wanderers) at outdoor markets, small museums, parks, and we ventured into unknown spaces. There is always something fascinating to discover in Paris and new ways to gain a sense of history.
Written by a prominent British ceramicist, this memoir is remarkable for its research and depth into the background of the writer’s forgotten Jewish heritage and five generations of his ancestors, the Ephrussis, who immigrated to Paris where, in the Nineteenth Century, they built a banking dynasty from Vienna to Paris.
After inheriting a collection of 264 netsuke—Japanese wood and ivory carvings—de Waal starts digging into the past to uncover the mystery behind the netsuke and why they survived when most of the family perished at the hands of the Nazis.
This is another WWII story that illuminates the tragic events of the period and the life of wealthy patrons of the arts and their interaction with artists in Paris.
264 wood and ivory carvings, none of them bigger than a matchbox: Edmund de Waal was entranced when he first encountered the collection in his great uncle Iggie's Tokyo apartment. When he later inherited the 'netsuke', they unlocked a story far larger and more dramatic than he could ever have imagined.
From a burgeoning empire in Odessa to fin de siecle Paris, from occupied Vienna to Tokyo, Edmund de Waal traces the netsuke's journey through generations of his remarkable family against the backdrop of a tumultuous century.
The Year Mrs. Cooper Got Out More
by
Meredith Marple,
The coastal tourist town of Great Wharf, Maine, boasts a crime rate so low you might suspect someone’s lying.
Nevertheless, jobless empty nester Mallory Cooper has become increasingly reclusive and fearful. Careful to keep the red wine handy and loath to leave the house, Mallory misses her happier self—and so…
As an enthusiastic and eclectic reader, one of my great joys is recommending books to others. I was able to indulge this joy consistently while teaching at a university, introducing students to authors and books and topics they otherwise might never have encountered. I find this same excitement in my own writing, searching for ways to reveal to others the magnificent wealth I find in modern poetry and in the brilliant concepts of poetic thinking.
A renowned teacher of expository writing, Perl is invited to Austria to offer a course on how to teach the Holocaust. Although her mother warned her that as a Jew she should never enter a German-speaking country, Perl decides to accept.
She writes with brutal honesty about the troubled and often profound relationships she establishes with her Austrian students. Her explorations of difficult and sometimes excruciating issues are conducted with a spirit of love and openness toward her students and herself. This is the most ethically engaged book I have read about the profession of teaching.
An award-winning teacher takes a journey into alien territory: Austria, Hitler's birthplace, and the territory of her own hatred. A teaching memoir that offers a pedagogy of hope.
I’m a former rock writer turned television critic, but in my teens, I became hooked on Raymond Chandler’s hardboiled Philip Marlowe detective sagas. The plotting was intricate, the writing exquisite and poetic. I also loved the no-nonsense pulp fiction of Mickey Spillane and his Mike Hammer character. So I’m always on the lookout for authors who combine realism and pace with great prose–like James Crumley, whose writing was like Chandler crossed with Hunter S. Thompson. Through journalism and band management, I came into contact with real gangsters and have always aspired to reflect their three-dimensional reality rather than glorifying them as television and Hollywood tend to do.
Los Angeles private eye Happy Doll is ticking along nicely, subsidising his detective work by protecting the women at a Thai spa massage parlour from over-amorous clients.
Everything is hunky-dory until he gets into a ferocious fight with a customer who ends up dead. Well-crafted crime noir that manages to be witty and quirky as well as occasionally violent, with pleasing echoes of Marlowe and Lew Archer.
In this deliciously noir novel from the creator of HBO's Bored to Death, idiosyncratic private detective Happy Doll embarks on a quest to help a dying friend in a sun-blinded Los Angeles as "quirky, edgy, charming, funny and serious" as its protagonist (Lee Child).
Happy Doll is a charming, if occasionally inexpert, private detective living just one sheer cliff drop beneath the Hollywood sign with his beloved half-Chihuahua half-Terrier, George. A veteran of both the Navy and LAPD, Doll supplements his meager income as a P.I. by working through the night at a local Thai spa that offers its clients…
My whole family shared a love for classic British mysteries, especially light-hearted, witty ones. With the enduring popularity of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, people sometimes forget there were lots of other great writers from the “golden age” of mysteries. I first found most of these books on my parents’ bookshelves when I was a bored teenager growing up in snowy central Maine. Several of the paperbacks were so well-worn the cellophane was peeling off their covers. For me, reading classic mysteries is like listening to Mozart—they are endlessly stirring and fascinating, and in the end, order is restored, and all is right with the world.
One of the funniest books I’ve ever read. Set in Paris in the 1920s, this mystery has everything I want in an escapist read: a suave detective, his sharpshooting, bad-ass girlfriend, a twisty, unpredictable plot, and fabulous, quirky characters.
Many are based on icons of the era: Josephine Baker, Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, and all the usual Midnight in Paris celebrities. I first read this in my teens, and I still reread it for the madcap humor and view of Paris in the 1920s written by someone who was there.
"It has the delicious irresponsibility of a Wodehouse plot. . . . It's one of the funniest books we've read in a long time. It contains a great deal of shrewd satire."—The New York Times Multimillionaire and philanthropist Hugo Weiss is known in every capital of the Western world as a munificent patron of the arts. When Weiss suddenly vanishes while on a visit to Paris, his disappearance sets the stage for this uncommonly witty and urbane mystery. Homer Evans, an intrepid American detective, turns his keen intellect and remarkable intuition toward solving the puzzle of the financier's disappearance. Assisted…
Don’t mess with the hothead—or he might just mess with you. Slater Ibáñez is only interested in two kinds of guys: the ones he wants to punch, and the ones he sleeps with. Things get interesting when they start to overlap. A freelance investigator, Slater trolls the dark side of…
When I was not yet a teen, a neighbor had what I considered to be a valuable treasure—all of the Nancy Drew Mystery series. Her daughter had died of leukemia, and she had held onto them as a reminder of her precious child. To my surprise, she entrusted them to me to read. That was the beginning of my passion for mysteries. As I got older, I couldn’t get enough of Agatha Christie and P. D. James. I visit them often, like old friends, but I am also eager to make new literary acquaintances. My list has only five, but it could have included thousands. Enjoy this diverse sampling.
I love all of Jacqueline Winspear’s books about Maisie Dobbs and am sorry to see that the author is retiring this character. I liked Maisie from the first, maybe because the 1920s are an era of fascination for me.
Not only was the mystery a good read, but it led me to do further research on the after-effects of World War I and the toll it took on the young soldiers, most of them barely out of their teens. Winspear is a great storyteller with a compelling heroine.
A favorite mystery series of Hillary Clinton (as mentioned in What Happened, The New York Times Book Review, and New York Magazine) A New York Times Notable Book of the Year Agatha Award Winner for Best First Novel Macavity Award Winner for Best First Novel Alex Award Winner
Fiercely independent Maisie Dobbs has recently set herself up as a private detective. Such a move may not seem especially startling. But this is 1929, and Maisie is exceptional in many ways.
Having started as a maid to the London aristocracy, studied her way to Cambridge and served as a nurse in…
Flannery O’Connor once said that all fiction is ultimately about the “mystery of personality.” I agree. In fact, I have always suspected that all good novels, genre-based or otherwise, are secretly mystery novels, if only in the psychological sense. Conversely, many so-called genre novels have just as much depth, insight, and realism as any literary work. I have read a lot of genre and literary fiction in my time, and I have long been fascinated by works that blur the line between the two. My favorite kind of book is one that feels like a genre novel (that is, it has a great plot) but also has the depth and vividness of a literary novel.
If there is one central defining quality of noir crime fiction, it is the main character’s struggle to preserve his moral center in a fundamentally corrupt and evil world. The best P.I. novels are able to render this kind of character in brushstrokes that are both beautiful and subtle.
One of my favorites is Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer, first introduced in this novel. When Archer is hired to find a missing rich guy in a tony, Southern California beach town, he finds himself knee-deep in violence, greed, and deceit, uncertain of who is guilty, who he can trust, and even who is worth saving. A moving target, indeed.
The first book in Ross Macdonald's acclaimed Lew Archer series introduces the detective who redefined the role of the American private eye and gave the crime novel a psychological depth and moral complexity only hinted at before.
Like many Southern California millionaires, Ralph Sampson keeps odd company. There's the sun-worshipping holy man whom Sampson once gave his very own mountain; the fading actress with sidelines in astrology and S&M. Now one of Sampson's friends may have arranged his kidnapping.
As Lew Archer follows the clues from the canyon sanctuaries of the megarich to jazz joints where you get beaten up…
I write cozy mysteries about a house flipper turned sleuth in fictional Crocus Heights, Minnesota. My father was a carpenter, and I was his helper. My childhood was spent on a farm, with the biggest event of the week being a trip to the local library, where I checked out seven books. I would prop my library book in front of my school book and read in class whenever I could. My favorites were mysteries, and later romances, and now cozy mysteries, which combine a bit of both. I am always fascinated by people and their motivations, and that is what I enjoy in all the authors I recommend.
I love every one of M. C. Beaton’s books, including her witty, wry humor and observations of an abusive ex-husband and her move to a small village. I love her flaws and that she is an unapologetic smoker and has two cats she loves. I love that she is relatable with a hardscrabble life, coming from an impoverished childhood and finally making it. Albeit with all the insecurities that come from her past. Every book is a treat.
'Every new Agatha Raisin escapade is a total joy' ASHLEY JENSEN
'No wonder she's been crowned Queen of Cosy Crime' MAIL ON SUNDAY
'A Beaton novel is like The Archers on speed' DAILY MAIL
The first Agatha Raisin mystery from bestselling author M. C. Beaton
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Revenge is a dish best served warm...
High-flying public relations supremo Agatha Raisin has decided to take early retirement. She's off to make a new life in a picture-perfect Cotswold village. To make friends, she enters the local quiche-making competition - and to make quite sure of first prize she secretly pays a visit…
I have been fascinated by mysteries of all kinds for as long as I can remember. Even as a child, I enjoyed Earl Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason books, which I found on my grandparents’ shelf, as well as the mysteries left to us by ancient cultures. The truth, for me, has always been something to be sought and treasured: mysteries and conundrums, things to be figured out and solved. But while credibility in all types of fiction is vital, it has to be about the characters for me, not just the plot. The people have to be real, no matter how unlikely the scenarios they are involved in.
Tim Weaver has a way of getting under the skin of not just his characters but his readers, too. For me, it helped that his main character, like me, had lost his wife to cancer. I could instantly relate. But beyond that, the plot was gripping, drawing me in and holding my attention from start to finish.
While reading one of his books and for a long time afterward, your mind has only two ways to be—either reading his book or thinking about his book.
Missing persons investigator David Raker’s heartstopping hunt for a mother’s vanished son—book one of Tim Weaver’s international bestselling mystery series
One year ago, Alex Towne’s body was found. One month ago, his mother saw him on the street. One week ago, David Raker agreed to look for him. Now he wishes he hadn’t.
Mary Towne’s son, Alex, went missing six years ago. Five years later he finally turned up—as a corpse in a car wreck. Missing persons investigator David Raker doesn’t want the work: it’s clearly a sad but hopeless case of mistaken identity brought to him by a woman…
